Today we begin the Best Practices for Building Web Applications for Domino 8.5(.1) Remote Redbook Residency... and I'm a little more than excited with not only the team that we've managed to assemble, but also the content that we are looking to cover in our 8 week remote residency. I'm excited by the prospect of creating content for both the seasoned Lotus developer as well developers new to the platform.

This tutorial will showcase a simple NotesDocument auto-save engine for an example NotesDatabase using the Domino CRUD API. The desired user experience will have the user's non-submitted NotesDocument auto-save after an admin-defined interval. To ensure a seamless user experience, I will continually - via a JavaScript timer - submit the "uidoc" via HTTP POST through AJAX to the Domino CRUD API to create (or update) a "temp" NotesDocument. We will create a custom response message to the HTTP POST and return the "temp" NotesDocument Unique ID (UNID), which we will use to update the "uidoc" HTML Form Processing Agent.

What's this all about? This is my NotesDocument Auto-Save engine for Domino Web Applications, which is an online demo turned Lotus Domino Designer Wiki article turned downloadable example application. Check out a quick video I put together to showcase just how simple it is to provide your users with such a valued feature:

For those of you - like me - who prefer to download an example application:

And now you have no excuse! Go add this feature into your existing Lotus Domino Web Applications, and never again get a call from a frustrated user who just lost 6 hours of editing a NotesDocument via a Web Browser when your Domino session authentication times out after 30 minutes...

I was contacted by Keith the other day asking me for a downloadable example from my WML-enabling a Personal Address Book - It's in the cards.... article.

Instead of going the multi-Design Element route (as the original article called for a View Design Element and a Form Design Element), I thought that I would take a second to simplify the approach and instead deliver the same functionality with a single Agent Design Element.

The Agent - named mobile - can be added to any Lotus Notes Personal Address Book Template-based NotesDatabase, have that NotesDatabase setup with an appropriately configured Access Control List, put in on a Domino HTTP-enabled Server, and simply point your mobile devices to NotesDatabase/mobile.

The Agent itself is very simple - by design - and can allow for customization via tweaking to meet the needs of the particular customer:

Sub Initialize

 Dim s As New NotesSession
 Dim db As NotesDatabase
 Dim col As NotesDocumentCollection
 Dim doc As NotesDocument
 Dim markup_options As String
 Dim markup_cards As String
 
 Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
 Set col = db.AllDocuments
 Call col.FTSearch(|[form] = "Person"|, 0)
 
 Print |Content-type: text/vnd.wap.wml|
 
 If (col.Count > 0) Then
  
  Set doc = col.GetFirstDocument
  
  Do Until (doc Is Nothing)
   markup_options = markup_options + |<option value="| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |"><onevent type="onpick"><go href="#card_| + Cstr(doc.UniversalID) + |" /></onevent>| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |</option>|
   markup_cards = markup_cards + |<card id="card_| + Cstr(doc.UniversalID) + |" title="Contact Info"><p><b>| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |</b><br />| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("mailaddress"), "") + |<br />| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("officephonenumber"), "") + |</p></card>|
     Set doc = col.GetNextDocument(doc)
  Loop
  
  Print |<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">|
  Print |<wml><card id="card1" title="| + Cstr(db.Title) + |"><p><select name="name">| + markup_options + |</select></p></card>| + markup_cards + |</wml>|
  
 Else
  
  Print |<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">|
  Print |<wml><card id="card1" title="| + Cstr(db.Title) + |"><p><b>Unable to load Contacts</b></p><p>There appears to be an issue with this address book. Please contact support.</p></card></wml>|
  
 End If
 
End Sub

Pretty simple stuff here, which renders the following WML markup:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
<wml>

<card id="card1" title="Example WAP NAB">
<p>
<option value="Chris Toohey">
<onevent type="onpick">
<go href="#card_3CEDB7D07E5327D98525760200117ECA" />
</onevent>Chris Toohey</option>
</select>
</p>
</card>

<card id="card_3CEDB7D07E5327D98525760200117ECA" title="Contact Info">
<p>
<b>Chris Toohey</b><br />
ctoohey@dominoguru.com<br />
610.417.1700</p>
</card>

</wml>

So feel free to take the above LotusScript-based Agent Design Element code and use it to add a mobile device WAP UI to any Group Address Books and such that you might have lying around. Also, feel free to point your mobile device WAP-friendly browser to check-out the online demo that I've setup.

(Note: I wrote this in an Agent and leveraged things like FTSearch from within the mobile Agent. I do this so you can easily pinpoint what's going on and apply any required modifications.)

Now, for a killer solution: combine this with Showtime and deliver via Channel Push - for example - as many icon-laden WAP-enabled Personal Address Books that your customer teams require.

So, to review:

To implement this solution, you can simply create a new Agent Design Element named mobile, past in my code, and point any WAP-friendly mobile device to /mobile.

Not that I'm the first to bring up this subject - a simple Google search for Google Gears vs DOLS returns a few really great articles and blog topics... but I have to wonder myself...

What's the best approach for a Lotus Notes-based application that you're looking to to extend to the Web Browser client that you want to also allow functional offline access? My gut tells me that there will be more web developers using Google Gears, and thus more published examples on how I can get the job done. Hell, just searching for DOLS on google brings mixed results while searching for Google Gears... Well, you get the idea.

I'll leave this up to you, Constant Reader: Google Gears vs. DOLS for a functional offline application? You decide!

The application in question? Well, I'm thinking about implementing this on my untitled Project Management and Tasking Application which I'll get started on as soon as the CMS is finished this week.

In the last video, I showed how you can use the $$Return in combination with some basic markup to create a simple Create and Update submission confirmation message or redirect to a URL.

In this video, I talk about creating a context-sensitive Smart Landing Page that uses a combination of Page Design Element, URL QueryString Parameter, XHTML, and some JavaScript to create a user experience that we're used to in Web Browser Applications.

Consider this my entry for Show-and-Tell-Thursday. ;-)

Questions, comments, and suggestions welcomed and appreciated!